I ate dinner and laid a bedsheet on the floor to sleep. Hoping to get sleep was the correct word because I was turning around like a log on the river because sleep was not coming. Finally, I stopped turning and lay gazing at the roof deep in thought. I thought about the professions available after the ceremony
There were, basically, 6 professions in combat. Those are: -
Ø Tank – They are the defensive powerhouse of every battle. They fight while defending, they retaliate more than initiating a fight. These people usually have a single-handed weapon and a shield. There are also groups who use two-handed weapons and discard the shield. In a fight, they help in organising the defence while guiding the offence to stabilise. They have great defensive ability and stamina and strength
Ø Fighter – They are the offensive front of every fight. They usually carry a lightweight weapon because they depend more on fluidity in attacks. But there are a lot of people who carry two-handed weapons or heavy weapons for attacking. They usually have high stamina and strength and speed.
Ø Rogues – These are the group that specialises in speed attacks and attacking and escaping. The hit and run tactic is the most common tactic used by rogues. There are many other tactics used by them. They usually depend on these tactics to successfully win a fight. They usually depend on dual weaponry of lightweight nature. They use short weapons like knives, short swords, daggers etc. They make great assassins and collecting information is their speciality. They usually have high speed, dexterity, stamina and intelligence will also be high.
Ø Rangers – These are the group that predominantly fight from long range like using bow and arrow. Yeah, my kind of people. There are also people who use weapons like darts, slings, and Javelins. They are usually good at providing backup and initiating a fight. They could also be used as assassins. These people also have substitute weapons like short swords or short weapons. They can be substituted for both rogues and fighters, but only for a short period of time. They have high dexterity, stamina, strength and intelligence.
Ø Mages – They are the main ranged or mass destruction providers in a fight. They usually don't have a weapon other than a staff or a wand. Their physical capabilities are low compared to other professions but they are magically well built. Their lower physical capabilities don't mean they are the easiest to kill, most mages have high defences using magic like magic shields or barriers.
Ø Clerics – Technically speaking clerics are also mages. But they don't fight. Clerics lack attacking capabilities. They are the lifesavers on every battlefield. They are the immediate as well as essential life support of every fighter in the field.
Each affinity has these 6 options to choose from and these professions may be modified according to their weapon of choice. There were 100s of combinations for each job according to preferences. Also, if you have more than one force affinity then that also influences the choices. For example, if you have all three affinities with Mana being the primary and Aatma being your secondary then you could become a summoner but if Aatma is your primary and mana is your secondary you could become beast tamer, not Summoner. The difference is that Summoner has to do a procedure similar to those without Aatma as main that is they need to kill the soul beast to link it. But the benefit is that no matter how many times a summon dies it could be resummoned after a few minutes to hours depending on your level. Another difference is that Tamed beasts are more loyal and trusting towards their masters than the summons. But if your primary is Ki and your secondary or tertiary is Aatma then you could be only a beat hunter. The difference here is beast hunter has a lower number of summons and he is a half summoner and half-beast tamer. He has to do both their procedures according to the situation.
Clerics are people different from Mages like summoners and beast tamers. Clerics have an additional blessing of Prithvi, God of Life. It is a rare blessing only 3 of 100 get it. So, most groups use the help of alchemists or doctors in their battles. Alchemical apprentices are the most common ones because most of the fire, Lightning or magma users take it as a secondary profession. Elemental affinity also differentiates clerics from each other.
Elemental affinity is a very long talk. But to tell in short, there are 5 basic elements & each is represented by a colour – Air (White), Water (Aqua blue), Earth (Brown), Fire (Crimson red) & Lighting (Yellow). Similarly, the next set of elements is known as deviants because they are based on the 2 or more basic elements. They are – Ice (Teal), Magma (Orange), Metal (Silver), Poison (Purple), and Fauna (Green). Then there are the special elements – Dark (black), Light (Pink), Space (Violet) and Time (Grey). Out of the elements, Time is the rarest one. Only 1 in every 1,00,000 have it. Space is next rarest with around 5-10 in 50,000. Dark and Light are rare as only 1-3 out of 10,000. If we take the rarity of elemental affinity from most rare to least rare it will be time, space, fauna, poison, light, dark, magma, metal, ice, lightning, air, water, fire and earth. Even though fauna and poison are deviants they are found like 1-2 in every 1000 only. Every combination of elemental-force-Job-weapon affinity creates a job or its variation of basic 6 combat professions or non-combat professions.
The problem with rarer elements is that it is hard to ingredients for creating higher-level portions and soul beasts that have the same capacity to become great. There are 9 levels every human reaches. Elves, Dwarves, Beastkins, etc. also follow these level scales. Even tamed soul beasts are represented in these levels they are-
Novice - Level 1 – 24
Apprentice – Level 25 – 49
Journeyman – Level 50 – 74
Master – Level 75 – 99
Grandmaster – Level 100 – 149
Sage – Level 150 – 199
Saint – Level 200 – 299
Demigod – Level 300 – 499
God – Level 500 above
The Highest level I heard about an alive human was about a teacher who travels across the country. He was at the pinnacle of saint level. They said that in a few more years he could become a demigod. Among Elves and Dwarves there said to have 2 or 3 Demigods and Dozen or so Saints. They usually live longer so they have more people at higher levels. The average age of humans of 125, whereas that of elves, is 210 and that of dwarves is 160. Beastkins generally live almost the same as a human there are variations according to their main branch.
The advancement is also influenced by 2 other factors other than elemental or force affinity. Those are Mental capacity and Dantian Capacity. Mental capacity is also known as Mind Sea level or mind consciousness level. Every person has both Mind Sea and Dantian. The forces, be it Ki or Aatma or Mana are all present in the environment outside. But they are not directly useable by anybody be they humans or other living beings. Dantian helps in purifying these forces from unusable to useable. The mind sea is the place where the purified force is kept or stored. A large mind sea means larger storage capacity and a larger capacity for Dantian means a larger number of forces can be converted into useful energy. Dantian is situated in the middle of the chest. Just above the stomach.
The 3 energies all are sent to the entire body in a different way. Ki is sent to the heart which transports it along with the blood to the entire body. That is how Ki enables the entire body. Mana on the other hand is transported to hands, legs, eyes, ears, nose and mouth/throat. Mana is not sent entire body. These are the places through which mana is manipulated. Purified mana helps manipulated the mana in the air. Aatma is a bit of both. It is only sent to the places same as mana. But mana can only be sent out from 2 places one from the hands, the other from the eyes. But sending Aatma through eyes takes long years of training. Moreover, the soul beasts usually reside in the mental sea of mana and ki users and Aatma users also have a portion of their soul beasts inside their mind sea which allows them mental communication.
For every Martial advancement, i.e., to move from Novice to apprentice or to above, they need the support of soul beast in addition to portions. For those who don't have Aatma as their primary, the procedure is to kill a soul beast and merge with them. While merging with them they would get a skill of the soul beast. While Aatma users don't kill the beasts. They soul link with the beast by making them obedient to their orders or wishes. The not killing of beasts affects the growth speed of every Aatma user. Non-Aatma users just have to kill and make the soul beast surrender to them. But Aatma users have to familiarise themselves and be friendly and ask the beast to be with them. The beasts can deny to be familiar with an Aatma user. Even if forcefully tamed, the beast will not obey any orders or commands.
The soul beasts of the non-Aatma users usually reside in their mind sea. Aatma users' soul beasts usually stay in the open. But what happened is that once the number of beasts goes beyond a limit it becomes very hard to travel, moreover, beasts cannot travel to every place. Cold temperatures are not suitable for certain beasts like water back camels or Earth scaled snakes while hot desert temperatures are a big no-no for beasts like a charred snow leopard or yeti ape. This problem was solved by the invention of the beast ring which is a dimensional ring but instead of a dark and blank ring, it is a ring that is capable of providing the best suitable place for the soul beast. If more than 2 beasts exist then there would be a transparent partition that allows beasts to travel and communicate with each other inside the ring and also recuperate. All the Aatma user needs to do is call upon the beast via the pact seal which lies in the mental sea of the person. This seal allows users to find the beasts no matter where they go.
Even though pact is considered as an identity of Aatma users. Non-Aatma users can also make a pact. They have a limit of 1 pact per lifetime, moreover, they can't use the beast ring. To make beast ring work you need aatma energy. For aatma users the number of beasts starts at 4 then you can add 2 for every martial stage. Someone who has reached Level 500 or God level will have 20 soul beasts. But the problem that arises for most aatma users is how to store the beasts before making a pact. If you have a beast that you did not make a pact with storing becomes a bit of trouble especially if don't have at least a couple of 10s in gold. For the non-aatma users, they can kill the beast and get soul beads that contain the essence of soul beasts. They use these soul beasts to merge with them.
The aatma users can make a pact with so many beasts, they can change all the beasts except one. That one beast is known as primo. They can never change a primo. If a primo is ever killed then the user can never make a pact with another beast again. His other beasts will not break the pact. But he cannot make new pacts. When I said he could change beasts, he needs the beast's permission to change. If a beast is left without its permission the user may lose his life depending upon the time period the beast has stayed with him. At the very least he could lose his mind.
While thinking about all this he fell into sleep.